Ultimate House

Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, has designed and built what he calls "Dilbert's Ultimate House." Naturally, there's an element of humor to the project (note the observatory with two round windows - remind you of anyone?), but don't be fooled. The objective was quite serious: to challenge established preconceptions of home design and create an eminently livable space.

Check out the design requirements, too.

Can I get a "woot, woot?"

I heard about this website the other day, called Woot.com. They're a severely no-frills online retailer. They offer one item for sale each day, allegedly at deep discount prices. A brand new item appears each day at midnight, which they make available until it sells out. And the process repeats itself the following day.

I can't explain it, but I'm oddly addicted. Each morning, I have to click over to see what the item of the day is. And, so far, they've been sold-out by 9:00 or 10:00 am. Maybe it's the whole "you only want what you can't have" phenomenon, but I feel a tinge of regret when I can't buy the standalone CD duplicator or coffee pot with the insulated travel mugs.

Their faq page is also mildly entertaining. Gotta love an eTailer with attitude.

Observations from KY

1. Kentucky has lousy restaurants. They all seem to be cut from the same cloth: bar and grill style with mediocre steaks, ribs, and burgers.

2. There's one up-side to sleeping in a hotel. Hotels have cable. Cable has comedy central. And comedy central has The Daily Show with John Stewart and South Park. Yeah!

3. We were close to Fort Knox, and I wanted to take a tour. Turns out, though, that Fort Knox doesn't *have* a tour. I can't possibly imagine what issues they'd have parading thousands of people through a room full of gold. Go figure.

"Just when I think I'm out ..."

"... they pull me BACK IN!"

Okay, I'm feeling a little like Michael Corleone in the Godfather, Part III. (*) It's my last week at the company - my last friggin' week - and they're sending me back to Kentucky. Needless to say, we got issues.

The customer's all shades of pissed off at us. They've decided our support sucks. So, we decided it may not be such a good idea to send a new hire up there all by his lone self. So, I'm the backup. Or, as I like to think of it, the relief pitcher.

I told my boss I know how to solve the problem: I'll make a big scene up in KY, tell off their VP or something. Then, he can tell them he fired me, and that all their support issues have been my fault anyway.

He didn't go for it.


(*) One more cultural reference for you to look up, Manjote.

Oddities for the day

Yep ... one week left at my job, and I'm busily slaving away ...

More proof that lions and Christians just don't mix.

Hmmm ... here's a story about a National Guard jet pilot, whom the military refuses to name. You don't suppose someone was taking a little victory lap, do you?

Bought some dvd's

I bought some DVD's last night ... two for $20 at blockbusters.

The Professional - I finally got to see this movie. A loner reluctantly shelters a twelve year-old girl, and gradually his life takes on new meaning. Oh, and did I mention that he's a ruthless hitman? It's a refreshingly nuanced film in this age of in-your-face blockbusters. #63 on IMDB's Top 250 list.

Master and Commander - A day in the life of the 18th century british navy. I liked the attention to detail, the naval strategy, and the performances were pretty good too.

Star Wars, Episode II - Yes, I know the story was crap. But, come on, I'd buy it for Yoda's lightsaber duel alone.

Kill Bill, Volume I - I liked Lucy Liu's management style. I have no urge to buy Volume II, though. Big disappointment for me. #57 on IMDB's Top 250 list.

Chicken Run - "The chickens ... they're getting organized" That line still cracks me up.

And a few weeks back I bought a few others.

The Godfather - the ultimate guy movie. Women just don't seem to get it, do they? #1 on IMDB's Top 250 list.

Glengary Glen Ross - A stellar cast, dynamite script, ... and the most hostile office environment I've ever seen.

Moulin Rouge! - Haven't gotten around to watching this again. We'll see how it holds up for me.

The Program - best football movie ever made. (Well, I liked it at least.)

MyYahoo ...

First of all, let me warn you that the geek rating on this post will be through the roof. So, read on at your own risk.

I've been using the MyYahoo service since it first debuted. It's a great service that lets you build a custom web page - cherry picking only the content that's appealing to you. But the content selection has always been limited to that which Yahoo and partners could serve up. Extensive, perhaps, but limited by nature.

That's about to change.

I've been trying a beta version of the latest MyYahoo upgrade. Its key feature is support for syndicated web content (RSS and other XML-based schemes). If you're not familiar with this, let me just say that there's been a quiet revolution occuring out on the web. Thousands of sites have started making content available in a form that's easily digested and integrated by other content management systems.

So what's the point? Well, my new Yahoo page is now packed with content from friends' blogs, my local newspaper, Time magazine, Dave Barry, and others. If you use MyYahoo, and fancy yourself a web aficianado, then you might want to check it out.

For the person who has everything ...

More proof that you can buy anything on eBay.

Sleeping on the job

So I had to work late last night. We were upgrading a customer in Omaha, and we had to start the procedure at 11:00 pm to minimize the impact to their paying customers. So, picture this: I'm sitting at home alone in the dark, dialed into a conference bridge, logged into the remote system. We've got two or three guys from my company on the bridge, plus a couple folks from the customer site.

Things went well for the first couple of hours. I find it helps to pretend that you're working in NASA's mission control. Like if you say things like "Moving on to procedure 3.12, step 6 'stopping replication on the RTX' ... please standby," though I drew the line at saying "Roger" in response to each statement.

Anyway ... things went well, that is, until we hit a snag (go figure!). We couldn't copy the data from the old database into the new database. Things pretty much came to a standstill while we got some designers from India to log into the system and start mucking around in the database. In my defense, let me just say that this took a long, long time.

I'm not entirely sure what time I fell asleep, but I was awakened by my cell phone at 4:30 am. Well, "awakened" is probably being optimistic. I don't remember exactly what he said - something about the database being ready, and had I finished step something or other. But I got the general sense that we were finished. At least, I hope so, 'cause I went to bed after I hung up. So, I probably didn't earn a merit badge in dependability last night, but everything turned out just fine.

At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.